The World In A Bottle

French perfumer Henry Jacques makes fragrances that unlock secrets and emotions. 

- Christina Ko

MADE-TO-ORDER HANDBAGS, slow food, customised vehicles, haute couture ... after years of pushing fast fashion and mass production, we have become obsessed with the old way of doing things. In the world of fragrance, veering from common scents has benefited houses whose wares aren’t so expected.

Henry Jacques is that – and then some. The perfume house was founded in 1975 by the eponymous Jacques, an avid traveller and scent lover, with a laboratory in Grasse where then, as now, perfumes were made to order by hand in beakers and test tubes. The house is now run by Jacques’ daughter, AnneLise Cremona.

Jacques’ wanderlust is worth noting because, as Cremona notes, “Perfume is about travelling. To make a perfume, you need 60 to 80 components, and they all come from different parts of the world.” In the ’70s, Papa Jacques met a nose whose father, grandfather and great grandfather had worked as noses, and along with Cremona’s mother, an untrained but knowledgeable fragrance expert, they built the beginnings of a legacy.